Cancel your all your bullshit workplace and family plans, everyone: The Jesus Lizard are (briefly) getting back together, just in time for the holidays. Yes, the Chicago noise rock legends have just announced a handful of dates in December, constituting their first performances in eight years.
Conversation around Jesus Lizard live shows typically involves a lot of superlatives on the part of folks who’ve seen them (I am not among that group, but I’ve seen footage). The three instrumentalists in the group — guitarist Duane Denison, bassist David Wm. Sims, and several drummers but mostly Mac McNeilly — were heralded as the tightest unit in their genre (i.e. feral, bulldozer-y noise rock) back in the day, and that brawny instrumental prowess served as the perfect vessel for vocalist David Yow’s…well, yowling (not to mention his crowd-surfing and compulsory clothing-removal).
But alas, the Lizard has been pretty dormant in recent years. The band’s last album was 1998’s Blue. They wrote a book about themselves, alternately known as The Jesus Lizard Book or simply BOOK (congruent with their habit of mostly naming their albums with four letter words), which was published in 2014.
The band last officially toured in 2008, and the press release announcing these upcoming shows ominously states “No plans exist for any performances beyond this December slate.” Sooooo, if you want to see what this whole The Jesus Lizard thing is all about, you’d better hop to it — you may never have another chance to get slizzered with the Lizard.
[Ed. note: in lieu of foisting some archival audio/visual “streaming content” on you at this point, please enjoy this recent tweet in which Bush’s Gavin Rossdale professes “mad love” for The Jesus Lizard.]
THX NICOLE X THE JESUS LIZARD..MAD LOVE…X DAVID YOW…MADDER LOVE…HUH….HUH..WOAH https://t.co/STsNpUpqP8
— GAVIN ROSSDALE (@GavinRossdale) February 14, 2017
The Jesus Lizard tour dates:
12.08.17 - Nashville, TN - Cannery Ballroom
12.09.17 - Chicago, IL - Metro
12.10.17 - New York, NY - Irving Plaza
12.14.17 - Los Angeles, CA - The Fonda Theatre
12.15.17 - San Francisco, CA - The Independent
12.16-17.17 - Houston, TX - Day For Night Festival
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